A one-sentence novel. Molecular structures used to contain toxic gases. Physics experiments that helped lay the groundwork for the cellphone. Groundbreaking discoveries about the immune system.
These are some of the contributions made by this year’s Nobel Prize winners. Every year, six prizes are awarded to individuals or groups for outstanding contributions across fields including physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, peace, and economic sciences.
So far, four of the 2025 prizes have been announced, while the peace and economics prizes remain. The former will be announced on Friday, and the latter on Oct. 13.
President Donald Trump has openly lobbied for the peace prize, which he has been nominated for both this year and in the past, but has never won. “I deserve it, but they would never give it to me,” he said in February at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu is one of several people who have nominated the President for the prize this year. He has also received nominations from the Pakistani government, for his role in de-escalating conflict between the country and India, and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet, for helping to broker a ceasefire deal between his country and Thailand, among others.
Read more: Why Netanyahu Is Just the Latest to Nominate Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize—and Likely Won’t Be the Last
There are 338 candidates for the peace prize this year, including 244 individuals and 94 organizations, the Nobel committee said. Past winners of the prize include President Barack Obama in 2009, Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk in 1993, and Mother Teresa in 1979.
The prizes are awarded out of Stockholm, Sweden, in December. The laureates, or winners, receive a diploma, a medal, and a cash award, the last of which is worth 11 million Swedish kronor this year, or roughly $1.17 million. The word “laureate” refers to laurel wreaths, which were awarded to victors in Ancient Greece as a sign of honor.
Here’s what you should know about the 2025 Nobel Prize winners.
Physics
John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis, all professors at American universities, were awarded for groundbreaking work in quantum mechanics that the chairman of the Nobel Committee for Physics said paved the way for devices like the cellphone and camera.
The committee cited a series of experiments the physicists conducted in 1984 and 1985 that proved two principles of quantum mechanics on a scale visible to the human eye: “quantum mechanical tunnelling” and “energy quantisation in an electric circuit.”
Quantum tunneling describes the phenomenon of particles penetrating a barrier when they don’t appear to have enough energy to do so. The committee noted that while an everyday object like a ball—which is macroscopic in scale—will bounce back every time it hits a wall, this tunneling is sometimes observed with single particles in their “microscopic world.”
Clarke, Devoret, and Martinis, the committee said, were able to demonstrate the phenomenon on a macroscopic scale in their experiments, building a superconducting electrical system that “could tunnel from one state to another, as if it were passing straight through a wall.”
The physicists also showed that the system was quantized, or only gained or lost energy in specific amounts, the committee said—demonstrating another principle macroscopically.
Clarke, who is a professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley’s graduate school, said in an interview following the announcement of the prize that he, Devoret and Martinis recognized the significance of their work demonstrating quantum tunneling “to an extent” at the time, but “didn’t have the remotest idea” how continually significant it would prove to be over the ensuing 40 years.
“I’m still stunned,” he said of his feelings following the announcement, noting that he was “so happy and so pleased” to win along with Devoret and Martinis. “I could not imagine accepting the prize without the two of them,” he said.
Chemistry
Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson, and Omar M. Yaghi were awarded the prize for developing molecular structures that the committee said have been used by researchers to “harvest water from desert air, extract pollutants from water, capture carbon dioxide and store hydrogen.”
In experiments that began in the 1980s and developed over the ensuing 15 years, the scientists developed frameworks using metals and organic molecules that contained cavities large enough for gases and other materials to flow through.
One commercial application of their work, according to a summary posted by the committee, is containing the toxic gases needed to produce semiconductors using such “metal–organic frameworks,” which can contain more gas than traditional materials.
Kitagawa teaches in Japan at Kyoto University, Robinson is a professor at the University of Melbourne in Australia, and Yaghi teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.
In an interview after the award’s announcement, Yaghi acknowledged that his life and work in chemistry have been “quite a journey,” noting that he was born into a family of refugees and grew up in a “humble home” in which a dozen people shared a single room with cattle they raised. “Science is the greatest equalizing force in the world,” he said.
“Science allows us to talk to each other, and I don’t think you can stop that. I think that that’s something that will continue to be important, and enlightened societies will encourage it,” he said during a later news conference hosted by Berkeley.
Physiology or Medicine
Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell, and Shimon Sakaguchi won for work the committee said was “fundamental” to understanding how the immune system functions.
“They discovered how the immune system is kept in check,” the committee said. “The laureates identified the immune system’s security guards, regulatory T cells, which prevent immune cells from attacking our own body.”
There are more than 200 clinical trials in process that are informed by their research, according to the committee.
Sakaguchi is an expert in immunology at the University of Osaka, Brunkow is a senior program manager at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, and Ramsdell is a co-founder of Sonoma Biotherapeutics, a biotechnology company based in San Francisco.
Brunkow said she wasn’t expecting to win. “My phone rang, and I saw a number from Sweden and thought, well that’s just spam of some sort, so I disabled the phone and went back to sleep,” she said in an interview following the award’s announcement.
Ramsdell, meanwhile, learned that he had won the prize only belatedly. He couldn’t immediately be reached by the committee because he was “living his best life and was off the grid on a preplanned hiking trip” at the time the prize was announced, according to his company; it was his wife that ultimately informed him, Ramsdell told the New York Times, after she regained cell phone service and received a wave of text messages.
Literature
The Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai, known for his dystopian novels and lengthy sentences, was awarded for what the committee described as “his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.”
“Krasznahorkai is a great epic writer in the Central European tradition that extends through Kafka to Thomas Bernhard, and is characterised by absurdism and grotesque excess. But there are more strings to his bow, and he also looks to the East in adopting a more contemplative, finely calibrated tone,” the committee said.
Krasznahorkai, who was born in southeast Hungary in 1954, was hailed as a “master of the apocalypse” by Susan Sontag. His latest novel to appear in English comprises a single sentence, including just one period in its 400 pages.
“I thank, first of all, the readers. I wish for everybody to get back the ability to use their fantasy, because without fantasy it’s an absolute different life,” he said in an interview after the announcement. “To read books gives us more power to survive these very difficult times on Earth.”
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